Incremental changes better
Assume you have had some problems..you are 5′ 9″ tall ..and your weight is 114kg. Suddenly you fall in love with yourself and want to come to a weight of about 80kg.
How will you go about doing it?
- Go to a surgeon and remove the extra fat with surgery. Then do a stomach stapling so that you cannot overeat.
- Go on a GM diet for 30 weeks at a stretch
- Go on a diet to give up all fat, oil, cholosterol, etc.
- Go to a dietician cum health consultant and enroll for a 3 week program
- Go and enroll in a gym ‘hoping’ to make a change?
Well nothing will work. Let us assume instead of all this you meet a good friend of yours and who is a good runner staying near our house. He suggests small changes.
He wants you to eat very carefully, and record it in www.myfitnesspal.com so that at the end of the day you know what you have eaten. He then wants you to start walking for about 40 minutes a day – in 2 slots of 20 minutes each. Morning and evening. You start doing that and lose about 5 kg in the first 45 days. YOU ARE HAPPY but some of your friends are saying “we could have done so much faster”.
Suddenly in 90 days you find that you are about 103 kgs and your dream of being in 2 digits looks real.
Your friend now starts you on a weight training, and cardio routine in his gym. In 180 days you are at 93 kgs and you are thrilled.
Now your personal target of 80kg looks possible. So what if it takes another 180+ days.
Which is the better route?
The small incremental changes or the big one that looked better?
Now come to Na Mo. He too is making small incremental changes which are sustainable. He could have removed all bank boards and merged 15 banks. Would it have worked? Congress and its cronies would have scuttled everything.
Instead he is making small incremental changes. Jan Dhan Yojana, Gold scheme (i need more clarifications on Income tax, wealth tax), appointing 4 men with good clean track records as bank Chairman (caveat: I may know them).
Remember none of the big things would have had any impact. Yes the press would have loved it…but..the small incremental steps of Na Mo seems to be far, far more useful.
What say?
Yrsharma
Tv anchors regularly show their disappointment that big bang reforms not happening(common reason given on tv whenever nifty falls due to goo taking out money). Recently in one tv debate, spokesperson of cgress party commented that why did NaNo relaxed 15 fdi norms just before britain visit when the same could have been done 6 months before.
I am completely at loss on relevance of these debates
Renga
Dear Subra Sir,
Indeed, very convincing article, Na Mo Sir is doing great things but some where along the line I some times think he is only focusing on big corporates companies, i.e., not giving important to Agriculture, Fishing, local issues etc.
I know the Corporate companies generate lot of job, growth to the economy etc but we can’t surely ignore Farming etc..
What say?
Sharan Sharma
Totally agree!
Don’t have any expectations from the media but what intrigues me how some CEOs/MDs talk about the slow pace of change especially when they should know better about structural issues.
To turn over a single company and change its culture takes years and here we have a huge diverse country with an bloated, lethargic and corrupt babudom + unprincipled opposition + hostile media etc.
Maybe the issue is simply with the massive pre-election hype.
I have a personal memory analogous to this: when i was a brahmachari trying to rapidly memorize the Veda, i proudly went to me teacher to show off how quickly i memorized a prashna. And he said: “Well, you can do all that but it will not last. If you want this to be permanent within you, put in your hard work but go slow, steady, disciplined and determined”. Those words have stayed with me. And applies to this situation too.
swiz
Till you wrote, “Now come to Na Mo”..i thought this article was about the power of compounding and the utility of SIPS 🙂 :).
Kishore
I wish Na Mo incrementally reduce fuel price and incrementally brings back the black money to India. 🙂
ajayrajaram
Assume you have had some problems..you are 5′ 9″ tall ..and your weight is 114kg. Suddenly you find all that lumps are cancerous tumours
How will you go about doing it?
VK
Agree with the premise. Incremental *improvements* (not just any changes) are fine, if one’s been doing decently well. But, if there’s just too much toxic build up, one could need an aggressive push – like defibrillation (against some homeopathy prescription!).
If a poisonous snake entered my home, I’d take aggressive, rapid steps to get it out!
No judgement yet, but watchful surely.
Kamal Garg
Agreed. The only thing is that ‘slow but steady’ should not become ‘slow and disappear’. We all know that if you want to have a permanent result, you must go for slow and steady kind of game plan to build a block literally brick by brick.
People at large may not be able to understand the game plan and may also not have patience to hold on. Look at Bihar election results. Imagine, three more States are also lost by BJP. Then what will happen to slow and steady. Slow and steady also has to show results incrementally.
However, I like the phrase “Slow, Steady, Disciplined, Determined”.
Dennis
If you are seriously ill with very high fever, what would doctor do first?
1) Give you ayurvedic tablet which will have effect on the long term
2) or, first stabilize the temperature with injection and once fever is stabilized then start giving small doses.
No doubt, NaMo may have some long term plans, which may be effective or not only time will tell. What about short term or medium term plan to tackle inflation, corruption or many other issues. I have not seen any steps in short term or medium term direction.